Atlantis
by Airgid-chead
Summary: Nisei celebrates his 18th birthday, wondering about all that is and could have been.


Disclaimer: I do not own _Loveless_.

A/N I hope it makes some sense. In my fics, Nisei is half Spanish and regards himself Spanish rather than Japanese. Also, it says he's an adult at 18, because that's the legal age in Spain, so even though he's in Japan, he chooses to see it like that. He committed a murder at 16 and his brother (working in the government) helped him avoid prison by producing papers stating he's mentally unstable, but later got the papers "misplaced", so Nisei avoided both prison and a mental ward. Though, his brother cut all the ties between them because of that crime.

...

**Atlantis**

...

Tired. Completely drained. Exhausted.

Of blaring music, sweaty bodies, excited yells, ramblings of the drunk, pushy hugs, cheers, dancing…

Of feeling so completely, utterly out of place. The kind of tired you experience doing something totally out of character, of forcing yourself to act as you should, but not as your heart tells you.

Who would have ever thought that this was how he was going to feel after his own birthday party?

Nisei chuckled darkly, dumping his birthday presents on the floor and throwing himself on a settee. For long seconds, he just laid here, thinking of nothing.

No. Wrong again. He never simply "thought of nothing", it was just what he told others. He couldn't bring himself to silence his mind completely, to break that constant race of images, sounds, memories, theories, pointless observations and quickly, carelessly drawn conclusions.

It'd been a party of his life. Or rather, he desperately tried to convince himself of that, even though some insistent, disturbing little voice in the back of his head kept keening something was lacking, something vital and important and life-saving.

He rolled on his side, knees curling to his chest.

No. It wasn't Seimei. True, it'd been painful and frustrating and degrading that his bastard of a sacrifice hadn't graciously granted his fighter's party with his presence, but it'd been expected and normal and short-lived.

It wasn't his friends, getting shit-faced halfway through the night, being able to do nothing more than rock to the music in their seats, because standing had been far beyond their motor skills, spending the night chatting (or attempting to produce comprehensible sentences) and getting even more drunk.

It hadn't been the presents. Not because they were what he wanted, far from that, but because all in all, he didn't truly care for them and had only accepted them as a part of a birthday tradition and a proof that someone had at least spent half an hour looking for something for him. Nevertheless, a gift token felt ridiculously heavy in his hand.

Nisei groaned, blindly reaching for a remote, wishing to lose himself in a brainless TV chaos.

Surprisingly, his hand found some papers. A card, given its shape.

He furrowed his brows, not exactly recalling putting anything on a living room table. Intrigued, he sat up, picking the mysterious card to inspect it closely.

It was a regular white envelope, a kind you could see everywhere. His heart began to beat faster when he spotted what was written on it:

"Feliz cumpleaños".

It was his brother's handwriting.

The same brother who hadn't spoken a single word to him for the last two years, since he saved his ass from getting arrested at the age of sixteen. The same brother who had firmly refused to have any kind of contact with a murderer.

The same brother who had always loved him with his whole heart and had never stopped watching Nisei from a distance, stepping in whenever his little hermanito got himself into more trouble he could handle.

But Ichiro had never done anything more than watching.

With trembling fingers, Nisei opened the envelope. His heart swelled with happiness seeing that his brother had chosen to use Spanish, remembering Nisei had always proclaimed himself Spanish not Japanese.

"Finally an adult, little brother. On that very special day, I wish you:

- smiles

- happiness

- harmony

- and madness

- music

- chocolate

- adventures

- colourful crayons

- love

- successes

- sun

- never-tangling headphones

- others' friendliness

- Ireland

- The Caribbean Sea

- finding Atlantis

- having better writing skills than I do.

May all your wishes come true.

I love you, little brother.

Ichiro"

Nisei's hands were trembling like crazy, almost preventing him from put the letter back on the table. Dizzy, not really knowing what he was doing, Nisei stood up and blindly strolled to his bedroom, randomly stopping on the way to calm his breathing.

Finally, he made it there, plopping on his bed, still as in a trance. His heartbeat was like a bell in the emptiness and silence of his flat.

His brother wished him "music".

Nisei rarely listened to music these days and if he did, he chose an aggressive, loud kind. It was suitable for his recent activities.

Nisei hated it wholeheartedly. He loved Arabian or Celtic rhythms that appeared to hold a secret, to be ageless and eternal, telling what had been, was and would be, making you feel golden sand under your feet or hear dark green leaves and a gentle breeze above your head. That made you believe there was more to the world that met the eye.

No one suspected he actually liked music, after all, he wasn't able to see the beauty in anything. It was alright, he himself had led them to think so.

Because, the truth was, he saw the beauty in the world. He saw the beauty and more, and that was the problem. He looked past the beauty that met senses, he saw the Mystery, in every single ray of sun, subtly caressing a tree, he heard some Ancient echo whispering on a wind, he felt a strange, untouchable energy pulsating everywhere around him.

He believed the myths, he found evidence for them every day, he craved an evidence, he needed a reassurance that some divine, magical power existed and could be detected. He yearned for feeling the Mystery, for experiencing it. He wanted to shudder with the intensity of the Unknown.

But it was stupid and childish and a weakness, something that could be easily used against him.

So he masked it with a cold indifference, with cynicism and irony and logical thinking. He could do that all, he was bright and intelligent, so smart comments and sharp intellect weren't a problem.

Those two sides had been warring inside him for as long as he could remember, that ability to observe things with aloofness and that desire to feel the Unknown. For the peace of mind, he chose the former.

Only it had never calmed his heart.

He stood up, staggering to his desk, where he leaned against a wall and hastily removed a calendar hanging above the desk. He threw it on the floor.

Underneath, there were several pictures of green valleys and circles made of stones.

Of Ireland.

He had some kind of obsession with that island, having always wished for nothing more than to visit it and explore, for it held a strange charm of legends and songs, all about mythical creatures, gods and Magic, of everything he had yearned to see and feel.

It was silly and no one wanted to listen to his stories about Sidhe, elves and giants. No one wished to be bored to death with poems about the West and the Sea, about tales seagulls carried.

No one desired to discuss Avalon with him, or the Lady of the Lake, things that held his interest despite their non-Irish heritage. But they were myths, they were both real and not, they were secrets, something you believed in even though you knew they were legends.

He took a picture of Tara and turned to face his books placed on a long shelf.

As if afraid to disturb their rest, he traced their covers with the same care someone would touch a cross.

Shakespeare, Homer, Tolkien, Coehlo…

An old book caught his attention. He delicately took it from the shelf.

Plato's dialogues.

For a moment, he itched to put it back, it burnt his hand in a silent accusation of Forgetting.

Oh, if it'd been that easy. If only he *had* forgotten.

He opened it randomly.

If only he had forgotten.

"_But at a later time there occurred portentous earthquakes and floods, and one grievous day and night befell them, when the whole body of your warriors was swallowed up by the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner was swallowed up by the sea and vanished; wherefore also the ocean at that spot has now become impassable and unsearchable, being blocked up by the shoal mud which the island created as it settled down_."

The book fell to the floor with a dull "thud".

Nisei stood above it, shuddering, silent tears welling in his eyes. Why couldn't he forget?

His life-time dream, to find Atlantis, to be the next Schliemann…

It wasn't about finding the long lost island that had probably never existed. For him, Atlantis meant Mystery, meant all that could be but was never seen, because people chose not to notice it. It equalled living a dream, fulfilling a desire, walking down his own path.

The path that was taken away from him, by people, by his own mind, by his stupid choices, by his Name. By those seven letters marring his otherwise perfect milky skin, stealing his freedom from him, binding him to a person that would never know him.

Seimei would never find out he wished to stand before the pyramids in Giza and simply feel their magnificence, to marvel at their greatness and the message they carried. Neither would Mimuro, his supposed best friend.

He was a sociopath now, a person with no emotions and desires, who lived a pitiful existence of nothingness and could never perceive the world around him. Who would only ever see facts, but never understood theories or dreams.

He would never let them think otherwise, it hurt too much to be ridiculed, to open your heart only to hear that the other "got bored with you". His brother was the only one left knowing that side of him, but Ichiro was no longer in his life. The others had abandoned him, saying that it was too much to try to deal with his way of thinking.

No one would ever look for Atlantis with him.

He would never find it.

And so, on the night of his 18th birthday, Nisei wept for himself, who would never be known by anyone.

...

A/N And, what do you think?


End file.
